The present invention relates generally to single-frequency networks. More particularly, the present invention relates to blind identification of single-frequency-network transmitters.
In many conventional broadcast transmission systems, a transmitter can be identified based on the signal it transmits. For example, in a frequency-division multiple access (FDMA) broadcast television (TV) network, individual TV channels can be identified by their transmit frequencies, and linked to their corresponding points of broadcast.
In contrast, single-frequency networks (SFN) transmit virtually identical signals from multiple points of transmission. Broadcasts from the various transmitters are generally synchronized, for example by GPS, to within tens of nanoseconds. While this type of macro-scale diversity has shown great merit in combating fading, in terms of positioning this method poses a significant problem in that an SFN signal does not identify its transmitter.